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A review by slowmantha
Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer
1.0
I only finished this book so I wouldn’t have to be reading it anymore. I picked it up because the premise sounded a lot like Authority, the 2nd installment in the Southern Reach trilogy, which I found creepy and menacing and haunting and great.
However. Page after page of “something mysterious and bad is going to happen!” foreshadowing, or “the answer was right in front of me but I couldn’t see it…” hint dropping, left me feeling like the author was more preoccupied with confusing me than with telling a good or believable story.
I’ve seen a lot of reviews complain that a mother wouldn’t leave her kid—to me, the issue is more WHY. Why does Jane even care about this? I think it’s meant to be kind of like a Fight Club situation, where Jane’s worldview is forever altered by this radical eco-terrorist or whatever she is, until nothing else matters. THAT makes sense; unfortunately the story did not do a good job showing or convincing me that that’s what happened.
Also. Being large in stature does not make a character interesting. I almost feel like VanDermeer got some good feedback about his female characters in the SR trilogy, so he just sort of plunked a half baked facsimile here and waited for his cookie.
This story could have been an X-files thread, and that would’ve worked pretty well. Mulder has a better backstory anyway.
Sorry Jeff.
However. Page after page of “something mysterious and bad is going to happen!” foreshadowing, or “the answer was right in front of me but I couldn’t see it…” hint dropping, left me feeling like the author was more preoccupied with confusing me than with telling a good or believable story.
I’ve seen a lot of reviews complain that a mother wouldn’t leave her kid—to me, the issue is more WHY. Why does Jane even care about this? I think it’s meant to be kind of like a Fight Club situation, where Jane’s worldview is forever altered by this radical eco-terrorist or whatever she is, until nothing else matters. THAT makes sense; unfortunately the story did not do a good job showing or convincing me that that’s what happened.
Also. Being large in stature does not make a character interesting. I almost feel like VanDermeer got some good feedback about his female characters in the SR trilogy, so he just sort of plunked a half baked facsimile here and waited for his cookie.
This story could have been an X-files thread, and that would’ve worked pretty well. Mulder has a better backstory anyway.
Sorry Jeff.